In foam assembly processes, such as foam mattress assembly, water based adhesives provide a safe, effective, and non-hazardous solution for bonding foam pieces together. However, the adhesive contains a large percentage of water. Therefore if a foam assembly bonded with water-based adhesives is packaged before fully dried, mold, unpleasant odors, substrate material breakdown, and the like may develop.
Further, even aside from the water of the water-based adhesives, foam can contain appreciable amounts of water, such as 1% to 2% water by weight, based solely on how it is stored. If stored in humid environments, the foam will retain a higher percentage of water weight compared to being stored in low humidity conditions. This water can also be a problem for mold and mildew growth when the mattress is packaged. This water, even on its own, can cause issues, and these issues may be compounded when water-based adhesives are present.
In particular, in foam mattress assembly and other assembled foam products, a fast growing trend in industry is to compress said assemblies into a box that may be shipped directly to customers. The boxes are sized such that traditional package shipping companies can handle them. These foam mattresses are laminated, and then enclosed in an impermeable plastic bag which is vacuumed and compressed so that it fits into the mattress boxes. Vacuuming alone to compress the package does not adequately extract water from the package, so trapped moisture is a common occurrence. Currently, the primary solution for this problem is to simply let the foam assemblies rest for a certain time period. However, this slows down the manufacturing and shipping process, and requires extra storage space at the manufacturing site.
Therefore, what is needed is a system that may allow for rapid drying of the assembled adhered foam elements to allow for a shorter processing time between assembly and packaging.